Americans aren’t feeling too benevolent these days towards big labor, or big business. The favorability ratings for labor unions remain near their lowest level in a quarter century with 45% expressing a positive view.
While this is bad news for the unions, it is good news for staffing companies.
The public also expresses similar opinions about business corporations – 47% have a favorable impression – and this rating is also near a historic low.
Americans express mixed views of the impact of labor unions on salaries and working conditions, international competitiveness, job availability and productivity. About half say unions have had a positive effect on the salaries and benefits of union workers.
However, as many people say unions have a negative effect as a positive effect on workplace productivity and on the availability of good jobs in America. And more say that unions have a negative (36%) than positive (24%) impact on the ability of U.S. companies to compete internationally.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Feb. 2-7 among 1,385 adults, finds virtually no differences in opinions about private and public sector unions.
Through the years, staffing companies have been at odds with unions. Oftentimes, unions consider staffing companies to be employing “scabs” that are undermining their efforts at improving work conditions, salaries and more. Across the country strikers picket in front of factories, yelling terrible things at temp employees as they drive in to work at their new, albeit temporary jobs.
When unions dissipate, staffing companies thrive. Many employers prefer the flexibility staffing companies afford them when it comes to handling their workforce. As long as this trend continues, staffing companies can look forward to future prosperity.
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Go on and hate the unions. I forgot that standing up for better working conditions was an un-American value.
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This piece wasn’t abut hating the unions, or loving the unions, it was just passing on the results of a survey. I know for a fact unions aren’t particularly popular within the staffing industry, and it seems as if the same is true from the rest of the country.
And make no mistake, the collective bargaining battle currently underway in Wisconsin is spreading, according to a recent New York Times article I quote here.
“Already, protests erupted in Ohio this week, where another newly elected Republican governor, John Kasich, has been seeking to take away collective bargaining rights from unions. In Tennessee, a law that would abolish collective bargaining rights for teachers passed a State Senate committee this week despite teachers’ objections. Indiana is weighing proposals to weaken unions. Union members in Pennsylvania, who are not necessarily facing an attack on their bargaining rights, said Friday that they planned to wear red next week to show solidarity with the workers in Wisconsin. In many states, Republicans who came to power in the November elections, often by defeating union-backed Democrats, are taking aim not only at union wages, but at union power as they face budget gaps in the years ahead.”
In Wisconsin, according to state-suppled figures, the average teacher’s salary is right around $60,000. But when you add in health care costs and three different sets of pensions funded primarily by taxpayers and not the teachers themselves, that average salary is closer to $100,000. And that is clearly unsustainable.
Unions did at one time stand up for better working conditions during the industrial age. But growing union power and their insistence on constantly growing compensation packages weakened and practically killed the auto industry and the steel industry and many others in this country.
So unions are not always the friend to the workers that we – or you – might think.
Holding companies and governments hostage by trying to take what does not belong to them is pure extortion. Unions are disgraceful and obviously counter-productive to a productive growth oriented society. If you must gang up with others because you can’t stand up as an individual on your own merits, it is a sure sign you need to go back to school or something. Nobody who has really prepared themselves well in life, educated themselves, and made a real concerted effort has ever been screwed over by big bad companies. That’s a fallacy you’re union bosses spew to get your dues and keep you mediocre in life. Run from unions.
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